Better than Imaginary Friends
by Moirae333
Summary: Percy Weasley remembers the first time he met Penelope Clearwater and the last time he saw his best friend. Percy x Penelope.


**Title: **Better than Imaginary Friends

**Rating: **PG

**Genre: **Dark-Fluffy Romance

**Spoilers:** Philosopher's Stone to Chamber of Secrets

**Period: **1992

**Pairings:** Percy Weasley/Penelope Clearwater

**Summary**: Percy Weasley remembers the first time he met Penelope Clearwater and the last time he saw his best friend.

**Disclaimer: **This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The plot, however, is created by the writer and is not to be replicated by another.

**Writer's Notes: **Written for (Miss) A's writing challenge on the HPDC. Requirements include the first person point of view, Percy/Penelope pairing and 1400 word limit. Thanks to Anne for the beta job.

**Better than Imaginary Friends**

_a percy/penelope romance_

I remember the first evening Penelope Clearwater had joined us.

The trail twisted through the jaded grounds of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, its route broken marble and overgrown with sallow flowers. The hamlet of Hogsmeade was nestled between the translucent waters and towering mountains, the street fires flickering on as the pale sun sunk behind the Forbidden Forest. As dusk had settled over the silent wizarding village, loused wizards with talking hands were thrown out of impressive homes and crimson doors were locked.

If one followed the broken trail southward, one would soon discover that Hogsmeade had a graveyard. The wrought iron gates squeaked in howling winds and drove last autumn's fallen leaves high into the air. Myriad tombstones rank the sacred grounds--fallen soldiers to some unworthy war they soon as never fought in. Their bodies rot six feet below the Earth's soil, lonely and forgotten to those who never thought about them while they lived.

Penelope entered the burial grounds from the eastern entrance. She stalled when she saw us, fingering her ebony curls nervously, and she gasped and jumped when the gate whined closed behind her. Penelope was a Ravenclaw prefect--we knew this from the prefect meetings held on the Hogwarts Express before the start of the year. She sat with the other Ravenclaw prefect, Roger Davies, and across from Slytherin prefect Terence Higgs. We sat in the corner, an assembly of gold and red, away from the other three houses.

She took a step forward, her robes scarcely touched the grimy cemented path leading to the mausoleum in the centre of the cemetery, her pale hands occupied with two silver coins.

Penelope's first words to us were, "You are desecrating my father's tomb."

We were resting on our back on top of the Clearwater sepulchre's cool stone. Decayed with time and marred with mosses that only grew towards the south, the crypt had been built in the sixteenth century by a man called Icarus Clearwater. His body was buried three feet below the soil while his descendants were piled high above him, bathed in dust and maggots. Fractured stone was knitted together by silver spider webs, the red and black arachnoids cowering from the sound of approaching footfalls.

"Miss Clearwater," I greeted, gazing down at coffee eyes.

She raised her thin eyebrows--we later found out she tweezed them--and gawked with a tilt of her head, her hair cascading down her shoulders and she tucked limp curls behind her ears. "Who're you?" she asked, her eyes narrowing as she focussed on freckled features and horn-rimmed glasses.

A soft sigh escaped our lips, the breath a pale wisp floating through the air. "Forgive me, m'lady," I spoke with a fake bow of the head, "I am Percival Ignatius Weasley, Gryffindor prefect. And this is my associate." I motioned toward the handsome Gryffindor sixth-year who was sitting behind me.

Penelope tilted her head, but she saw right through the other redhead.

We jumped from the mausoleum, dropped six feet to be standing next to Penelope.

"Why aren't you watching the Quidditch game?" Penelope asked us.

"The same reason you're not," I replied.

Penelope cocked one of those tweezed eyebrows, and surveyed us with judgmental eyes. "To pay respects to my ancestors?" she asked sardonically, crossing her arms below small breasts hidden beneath heavy Ravenclaw robes.

We apologised and watched her disappear into the decaying mausoleum, and we were still standing there when she emerged, her black hair silver with dust and cobwebs. We had heard her melodic voice whispering to the sky a poignant prayer to the virgin mother. Her face paled when she saw we had not disappeared, and an exasperated sigh escaped ruby lips. Tears brimmed in her brilliant eyes and she blinked them quickly away, and recaptured the attitude that certainly led to her title of prefect.

"Mister Weasley, it is prohibited to be straying from Hogwarts's grounds these days."

We cracked her a questionable grin, and our eyes strayed from her body and surveyed the dying grasses and twisted trails of the burial grounds. The sky had plummeted to a murky mauve colour, the silhouettes of spring trees held hostage against the montage. The waxing moon hung ominously through the fractions of greying clouds, radiated its dirty waves of pale light over the cemetery, over Penelope's silvery hair.

"Miss Clearwater, it is prohibited to be straying from Hogwarts's grounds these days."

I plucked a black spider from Penelope's hair, setting her loose on a fresh headstone.

Penelope remained silent as she attempted to untangle her hair from sticky web. Silver strands caught on her curls and fingertips, matting into the gel and hairspray that was her early morning regime. She cursed Merlin's name beneath her breath, and blushed when she realised what she had done.

"Would you like some help?" I offered.

Wide eyes stared at me.

I felt a pang in my stomach, which I was quick to dismiss as supper.

I reached for my wand--10" oak with dragon scale-- which was buried deep within my Gryffindor robes. "There is a spell," I explained haughtily, and the glimmer that I had seen in her eyes drifted a little away at my tone. "_Augaro_!" With a black flicker, Penelope was separated of all dust and spider webs--she was standing two feet from where she once was, the fragments a ghostly memento of this evening's reminiscence.

We knew she was impressed, and my companion boasted of creating that spell. Penelope paid him no attention, and she was a clever student in mastering the new Charms techniques I taught her. That glimmer I had noticed drifting earlier had returned as I guided her arms in the correct direction.

I breathed in deeply the scent of her perfume as I illustrated the final motion--counter clockwise with a sudden jerk. A soft giggle escaped Penelope's lips as she removed an eighteenth century tombstone from moss and insect cocoons.

Penelope glowed and we saw her laugh for the first time. We crawled back onto the roof of her family's mausoleum, swinging our legs over the edge. Silence flowed through the cemetery as the obsidian fogs that clung to the headstones, and we stared over the world before us. We spoke first about trivial matters such as Snape's wolfsbane potion lecture and Lockhart's ridiculous speeches on vampires. As the waxing moon was angled at seventy-two degrees in the blackened sky, the conversation morphed into a graver tone of family life and friends.

The beautiful Penelope poured her heart out to us about her stepfather and Muggle mother, and beamed when I took her hand within mine. I was pondering that action for fifteen minutes and my hands were shaking when I had finally acted upon it. The beads of sweat that had come to form around my hairline were beginning to evaporate from the cool night air.

Penelope then asked me about my home life, and never feigned interest when I ranted about the twins or my concerns about my youngest sister, Ginny, starting Hogwarts. And then she had done something no one had done before -- she not only listened, she replied and gave her opinion in the matter, tilting her head towards me as she talked.

Then, she leaned forward and kissed me.

Her lips were soft, feathery, and her eyes were closed so she never saw how surprised I was. I closed my eyes and pressed my lips tentatively to hers, wrapping my arm around her thin waist. I was the first to pull away, and when I reopened my eyes, hers were already open and she was blushing. I blushed with her.

Dawn was chasing dusk when we left the necropolis, waving our goodbyes to the departed souls as we walked backwards down the trail for good luck. Penelope and I kissed our goodbyes on the front steps of the Hogwarts steps, entering the doors of the school as groundskeeper Hagrid was approaching with the logs for the morning fire in the Great Hall. The students were beginning to come down for breakfast, and she was joined by Roger Davies before taking her seat at the Ravenclaw table. I sat between Oliver and Fred at the Gryffindor table, my eyes cast downwards and a small smile upon my freckled face.

I remember the first evening Penelope Clearwater had joined me.


End file.
